Cradle of Democracy. Fountainhead of Western culture. Bastion of the sacred love between an old man and a debatably pubescent boy. You’ve given us Plato, Socrates and Rembetika; feta cheese, tzatziki and a fim adaptation of Zorba The Greek, with a Mexican playing the lead.

We could go on about all the dope shit you’ve bestowed on the globe. We’d very much like to, in fact, but for the love of a weeping Markos Vamvakaris, man, where to begin with you these days? Ay gamisou – after your embezzle-friendly establishment made India look upright and forthcoming after 2008, you just about went bankrupt in 2010. Which led to austerity protests in Athens that made the state-sponsored beat downs at the Seattle and Toronto G20s look like a lazy round of pétanque in the shade of the Acropolis. Even a coterie of 300 Spartans slathered in olive oil couldn’t arm-wrestle global focus from what came next: a resurgence in failing-state things like Fascisto-rock and anti-immigration parties like the Golden Dawn establishing themselves in the time it takes to assault a foreign fruit vendor.

This was also about the time we started hearing about new kinds of drugs infecting the hallowed haunts of the Hellenistic capital. Like krokodil – a homemade opioid so devoid of upsides it was named for how quickly it turns your skin into lizard scales. This concerned us greatly because we’d only really heard of the stuff being available in the ghost towns of deepest Siberia. You know, out where the truly downtrodden and abject are forced to cop, the most ready references being asteroid crashes and gulags.

But now you’ve got a new, tottering but relatively balanced coalition of Left and Right, and the great purveyor of democratic rule has come together and grown a swinging pair of malakas – balls so big that even in the face of defaulting on 240 billion euros, you asked Germany for a paltry ten billion in reparations for a misbehaving Third Reich. Not even the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn could hope for anything more than a golden shower from Berlin upon such a request. Angela Merkel agreeing to that would be the stuff of Greek myth or, perhaps more apt, a scenario about as realistic as a Brothers Grimm book. (Speaking of fairy tales, we’re pretty sure Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is how Merkel envisions herself vis-à-vis her counterparts in Brussels, and has thus been able to suffer the Berlusconis and Sarkozys of the world.)

So, Greece, now that you’ve got Germany, head banana of the EU Council, cock blocking you, you’re fucked, and the pull-out method is a worse choice than riding a fecund Venus de Milo bareback and keeping it in until the end. And anyways, apart from your EU creditors, who else has the hands to stroke your limp economy back to an acceptable turgidity? What’s that, you say? You’re thinking of accepting China’s help? Wouldn’t recommend that. Look at Africa. All that Chinese infrastructure on the Mother Continent is what the United States did in Europe after WWII, making sure everyone owed them something. That’s what made them a world power. The Chinese are just doing it without having to fight a war. You can’t trust China.

The Americans? They’d only be lending you Chinese money. No, no, no.

Russia? You can’t be serious. Your coastlines are even better suited to submarine attack routes than Ukraine’s. You know what Putin did up there, and if you’d been watching closely, you would’ve asked how all that krokodil got onto your streets in the first place, and traced the flesh-eating recreational drug back to the Russian cook-ops. Plus, Moscow’s so broke they’ll probably be lending you your own junkies’ money.

Look, no one’s cheering for a Greek Tragedy here, but a Mediterranean Elysium looks as distant as it was when you guys first dreamed it up, just about the time you dreamed up our preferred god of yours, the venerable and always cheery Bacchus. Just ask yourself: What would Bacchus do?